Generating virtual reality content for a 360° environment may be analogized to generating content that is displayed in a sphere that surrounds a user. Because the user may look anywhere in the sphere, current virtual reality systems generate high-quality content for every pixel in the sphere. As a result, virtual reality content is data rich. Because the user may only look in one direction, most of the pixels in the view are not seen by the user. For example, it is frequently a waste of bandwidth to include data rich content that is located behind the user because the user is unlikely to turn 180 degrees to view that content.
When the virtual reality content is for a video, the data requirements are massive because the video is generated for each pixel in the sphere. As a result, it may be difficult to stream the virtual reality content to the user because of bandwidth constraints.
One solution to the problem of current virtual reality systems may be to provide a viewing device with virtual reality content that corresponds to the direction of the user's gaze. However, because the user may move and look in a different direction, the movement may result in the user perceiving a lag in the virtual reality content as the virtual reality system updates the direction and transmits virtual reality content for the different direction.
Another solution may be to predict the direction of the user's gaze. However, if the prediction is wrong, the resulting virtual reality content may have both lower quality and less stability than traditional virtual reality content.